Draft Day relies on a “ticking clock” built around the NFL draft — counting down to the
fateful decision that one embattled general manager (Kevin Costner) makes with his first-round
pick.

The thriller turns into a reasonably interesting peek — to NFL fans, anyway — behind the
curtains at the wheeling, dealing and overthinking that goes on as teams, managers and coaches try
to avoid looking as if they don’t know what they’re doing.

They are nagged into making hasty or ill-advised decisions by agents and the players they
represent, and by showboating owners who like to “make a splash,” get their faces on ESPN and
impress the hometown folks with their football acumen.

The GMs have their own slang and swagger, making the movie a natural for Costner — considered
for decades the go-to film actor for jock roles.

But, for the casual fan and the casual moviegoer, it can be a bit of a melodramatic bore. The
ticking-clock thriller doesn’t really get going until the teams are truly “on the clock.”

Costner is Sonny Weaver Jr., general manager of the hapless Cleveland Browns. They have an antsy
owner (Frank Langella) and a new, preening coach (Denis Leary), who likes to flash his Super Bowl
ring under everybody’s nose.

Will Sonny pick a cocky, pushy defensive back (Chadwick Boseman of
42) or trade up to land the Heisman Trophy winner (Josh Pence)?

What’s fascinating in the wheeling-and-dealing early scenes is the way gossip gets started, the
way the veteran managers play one another and read one another. Rumors about the Heisman winner
bubble up to the surface.

Sports talk radio covers this sort of “How much does he want to play?” stuff from a speculative
viewpoint.
Draft Day sets out to show how the stock of a Johnny Manziel or Jadeveon Clowney rises and
falls in the hours leading up to their big payday.

Sonny gathers intelligence from his staff and steels himself to make a decision he knows the
owner won’t like. Then more gossip comes in, and he is on the fence, which gets the coach all
worked up. Everybody is playing the angles against everybody else.

What doesn’t work is the added melodrama in all this. Sonny’s dad used to be the Browns’ coach.
His dad just died. His mom (Ellen Burstyn) won’t get off his back. And his not-that-secret office
romance (Jennifer Garner) just gave him some news.

Draft Day is an NFL- and ESPN-sanctioned dramedy designed to cash in on and maybe goose
interest in the draft, which television and the league have turned into a spring spectacle. It
doesn’t have a lot of rough edges to it, nothing unflattering to the league or the cable company in
its back pocket.

Costner and Garner are good, and Langella is properly menacing. But Leary has lost his fastball
and seems to be holding something back in his quarrel scenes with Costner. Costner has to carry the
film, which he does. But he has a hard time making this tale of accountants and agents and athletes
with off-field issues exciting.

Filling the screen with character players ranging from Chi McBride (a rival owner) to assorted
NFL Network and ESPN (past and present) stars, and shifting from city to city, stadium to stadium
as the phone calls zip back and forth doesn’t really ratchet up suspense or entertainment
value.

But for the fans, it’s a competent eye-opener, a movie that makes you understand Jets
quarterback Geno Smith’s fury at falling out of the first round and the sort of whispering
campaigns that this closed culture of front-office folks mount to let them win in May, even if they
don’t win in the fall.